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April 11, 2005

Rising obesity and overweight among children means Europe will face an explosion in the "metabolic syndrome", an expert warned today (Sat).

Already the problem affects millions of people with an estimated 15% of the European adult population having a combination of obesity-related risk factors for severe complications such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.[i]

Professor Philip James, chairman of the London-based International Obesity TaskForce, said the whole of Europe was fast catching up with the USA where the metabolic syndrome has risen dramatically in the past 10 years and now affects up to 32 % of adults - an estimated 50 million people.[ii] Recent studies suggested that 2 million US adolescents - one third of all overweight youngsters - were also affected, compared with just under 1 million estimated less than a decade earlier.[iii]

In Southern Europe the drift away from healthier Mediterranean-type diets over the years was a significant feature leading to obesity and metabolic syndrome, and a recent survey now suggested that in Greece alone, 2.3 million adults may be affected, he told a conference on the metabolic syndrome in Athens.[iv]

A study of "apparently healthy" families in Northern France had revealed a significant increase in metabolic syndrome over five years with the children of affected adults showing early signs of cardiovascular risks.[v]

"The metabolic syndrome presents two challenges. We must act swiftly with effective public health measures to ensure we do all we can to prevent the situation getting much worse. That means vigorously pursuing the WHO global and European strategies to achieve real improvements in diet and physical activity. We must also recognise that the metabolic syndrome provides the warning signals to trigger therapeutic action to prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes and heart disease," added Professor James.

He was speaking at a satellite symposium to the 39th Annual Scientific Meeting of the European Society of Clinical Investigation. The symposium entitled "Stress, Obesity and the Metabolic Syndrome", was convened in memory of the late Swedish Professor Per Bjorntorp, a renowned international expert on the metabolic affects of stress and obesity.

Professor James said there was now a need for an international consensus on how to define metabolic syndrome in both adults and children, and the evidence of the MetS-Greece study reflected the need for more comprehensive research and surveillance to assess the full scale of the problem throughout Europe.

In March the International Obesity TaskForce, part of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, assisted in the Brussels launch of the European Union Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, highlighting the high levels of overweight and obesity among adults and children throughout the EU in a briefing paper which can be downloaded from: http://europa.eu.int/comm/health/ph_determinants/life_style/nutrition/documents/iotf_en.pdf

[i] Hu et al DECODE Study Group: Prevalence of the metabolic syndrome and its relation to all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in nondiabetic European men and women. Arch Intern Med. 2004 May 24;164(10):1066-76.
[ii] Ford ES, Giles WH, Mokdad AH. Increasing prevalence of the metabolic syndrome among U.S. Adults. Diabetes Care. 2004 Oct;27(10):2444-9.
[iii] Duncan GE, Li SM, Zhou XH. Prevalence and trends of a metabolic syndrome phenotype among U.S. adolescents, 1999-2000 Diabetes Care. 2004 Oct;27(10):2438-43.

[iv] Athyros V.G. et al. The MetS-Greece Collaborative Group. The prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in Greece: The MetS-Greece Multicentre Study. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism Online publication date: 24-Nov-2004 doi: 10.1111/j.1463-1326.2004.00409.x

[v] Maumus S et al. A prospective study on the prevalence of metabolic syndrome among healthy French families: two cardiovascular risk factors (HDL cholesterol and tumor necrosis factor-alpha) are revealed in the offspring of parents with metabolic syndrome. Diabetes Care. 2005 Mar;28(3):675-82


International Obesity TaskForce